But Evan would never allow that. She might have rid herself of the need for Rust, but he would never allow her to leave the habitat and get entirely away from him.
What to do? Who could she run to? She dared not contact Raven. Evan would find out and punish her. Maybe kill her, just as he’d had Quincy O’Donnell murdered.
She did not want to serve Evan Waxman anymore, not for another day, not for another hour, another minute. But how to get away from him? How?
It was late in the afternoon before she made up her mind.
Checking her desktop video, she saw that Waxman was deep in conversation with one of the habitat’s councilmen. They were talking about the construction of Haven II. Quincy O’Donnell’s death had put a crimp in the construction schedule, from what they were saying, but that would be smoothed out soon enough.
Alicia tapped out the number for Tómas Gomez’s quarters, and there was Raven, seated beside the astronomer, scrolling through a long, incomprehensible list of alphanumeric symbols.
I can’t call her, Alicia said to herself. Evan might find out. But maybe…
She thought over the idea that had cropped up in her mind nearly an hour earlier. At last she decided that it could work. There was some risk involved, of course, but sitting here doing nothing was riskier.
Checking back on Evan, she saw that his conversation with the councilman was finished. Time to act, she told herself.
Alicia Polanyi got to her feet, stepped to the door to Waxman’s private office, and rapped on it firmly.
ACTIONS
Without preamble, Alicia said to Waxman, “I want to set up a boutique.”
Waxman’s brows climbed toward his scalp. “A boutique?”
“A shop for women. A place where they could buy stylish clothes, jewelry, shoes… that sort of thing.”
His eyes narrowing slightly, Waxman said, “We already have shops for women.”
Stepping farther into his office, Alicia said, “Yes, I know. But they’re more like military depots than shops where a woman can choose from the latest fashions.”
“That’s Umber’s doing. He wants our people to dress pretty much alike. And besides, that keeps the price of clothing low. Nobody can out-do her neighbors. No competition between the women. Or the men, for that matter.”
“But women like to dress up,” Alicia countered. “Why should we all go around wearing the same uniforms?”
“From what I’ve seen,” Waxman answered, “lots of women make their own alterations on their clothes.”
Alicia nodded vigorously. “Yes. Of course they do. No woman really wants to go around in the same uniform as everybody else.”
“A women’s clothing shop,” Waxman mused.
“It could make a profit for the habitat,” Alicia coaxed. “Only a small one, at first, but…”
For a long, silent moment Waxman stared at her as he thought, She wants to get away from me. She wants to set herself up as someone to pay attention to.
With a shake of his head, he told Alicia, “This is something that’s beyond my authority. You’ll have to get Reverend Umber’s permission.”
Clamping down on the thrill of excitement she felt, Alicia asked, “May I speak to him about it?”
Waxman clearly was not pleased with the idea, but he reluctantly agreed, “I suppose so.”
“Oh, thank you, Evan! I’m so grateful!”
Waxman nodded, thinking, We’ll see just how grateful you are the next time I invite you to my quarters.
Now comes the hard part, Alicia told herself.
It was late in the afternoon. She carried the plastic tube half-filled with Rust in the pocket of her slacks as she headed for Raven’s quarters.
Evan can track me through the cameras set up along all the passageways, she knew. But once I’m inside Raven’s place there won’t be any surveillance devices watching me. She knew this from the long months she had spent as Waxman’s assistant. Private quarters were kept private, at Reverend Umber’s insistence.
“We’ll have no Peeping Toms in Haven,” the reverend had commanded.
Other men and women strode along the passageway as Alicia approached Raven’s quarters. Aside from a nod or a smile, they paid scant attention to her. She had memorized the combination to Raven’s front door. No pulling out a slip of paper when she was ready to tap out the entry code. It’s got to look as if I’m going into my own place—which was several dozen meters farther down the corridor.
No one seemed to pay any attention to her as she quickly fingered the lock’s combination. The door slid open smoothly and Alicia hurriedly slipped inside, then slid the door shut again.
She went into the kitchen and glanced at the little refrigerator sitting beside one of the storage shelves. She pulled the tube of Rust from her pocket and, after scanning the kitchen’s ceiling for a sign of a surveillance camera, threw the vial and its contents into the disposal chute.
The chute’s door snapped shut, but not before Alicia saw the flash of light that meant the vial and its contents had been vaporized, utterly destroyed, broken into their constituent atoms by the disposal’s laser system.
Then she pulled a small pad from her other pocket and scrawled on it: Meet me in the main cafeteria as soon as you can.
She signed the note with a single sweeping A, then pressed it onto the kitchen table. Again she looked up and scanned the ceiling. No sign of surveillance cameras. Still, she felt nervous.
Alicia wanted to phone Raven, but feared their conversation would be tapped by Waxman. Instead, she made her way to the main cafeteria, found a table for two off in a corner far from the serving counters, and waited for Raven to show up.
BOOK THREE
THE ASTRONOMER
LIVING ROOM LABORATORY
Tómas Gomez sat in the makeshift laboratory that had once been his living room. The room was jammed with instrumentation—sensors, computers, diagnostic monitors—humming and beeping and flashing flickering images on their viewscreens.
He sat at the room’s tiny desk, staring glumly at the symbols scrolling down his desktop screen.
Nothing, he moaned inwardly. The submarine had scooped up more than a hundred samples of the seabed’s rocks and sands, which were now carefully laid out across the floor of the docking area where the submersible itself was resting, halfway across the habitat’s circular structure from Gomez’s apartment. Automated cameras and diagnostic analyzers slid slowly along an elevated trackway, carefully examining each specimen and automatically televising the imagery to Gomez’s desktop computer screen.
Nothing but rocks and sand.
Gomez looked up from his screen, across the narrow desk at the chair where Raven had been sitting. After a ten-hour-long day with him, she had left for dinner. She had asked Gomez if he wanted to come with her to the main cafeteria, but he had declined, glued to his self-imposed vigil.
Chemical analyses of the ocean bottom’s sands showed nothing but sand. Ordinary sand that had been sitting on the floor of the sea for billions of years. The same for the samples of rocks that the submarine had dredged up. Natural, commonplace rocks, nothing unusual about them, nothing that suggested anything surprising.
Nothing, Gomez told himself. Nothing but natural materials, no hint of anything that hadn’t been there since the planets were formed, nearly four billion years earlier.